Aftermath

“Graphic Healing” by Mirjana Miric

It was the summer the first cyclone swept through Basant, peeling the tin roof off the Sundari Tea Stall, collapsing its bay windows in a heap of broken promise. Not content with this savage makeover, the storm catapulted the samosa fryer through the windshield of an Ambassador in the parking lot after propelling chili spoons into the wood of the Tipsy Peacock Bar, where they stayed buried for the best part of a week.

It was the summer of jagged hailstones, deflated rice paddies, and immature grain heads mashed into the silt that dried before the noonday Kirtan could echo from the village temple. There were no jobs for field hands that year, but plenty of work at the Kali Construction Company for those willing to endure the thankless drudgery and laughable pay. College boys toiled in the settlement as well, nailing corrugated tin, brushing boiling tar across the roofs of the bathhouse and the Spicy Bros Pakora Hut. They sweated and sparkled bare-chested as Preeti Patel and Sujana Chandoke sat in Meena Banerjee’s car above the bare patch of earth where Sundari Tea Stall once stood in all its glory. There they sipped cool nimbu pani, objectifying the young male flesh on display.

It was the summer Mandhata Bose tied her sozzled husband in a sari and thrashed him with a steel karahi until he begged for mercy, braying like a mule, beaten by his aggrieved consort. Out in the storm-ravaged backyard, she rained blows on him long into the evening—richly deserved and seriously overdue—as if the cyclone’s tailwinds remained in play.

It was the summer Pramod Banerjee abandoned his wife and daughter, grabbed two-thirds of the insurance payout from his hail-bashed farmhouse and dented Ambassador, then drove all the way to Sikkim to gamble his life’s savings on a pair of jacks among seasoned players; a half-dozen of whom greeted him with open arms and empty flattery, affording him the kind of welcome reserved for a cash-rich dimwit on the verge of losing big.

It was the summer a bare-assed Ravi Sen fell on the restroom floor of the Tipsy Peacock, still in mourning for the tea stall his father had built and which the storm had wrested away, stripping him of his dynastic pretensions. This, after a stray mongoose shot out from the dirt-rimed toilet, squeezing past the tensed buttocks of the dispossessed heir. Animal and man perceiving each other as ill omens that spoke to the season’s unpredictability, the worst of which had already come to pass.

It was the summer Mandhata Bose and Ravi Sen fell in love over a dish of fiery pakoras at the Spicy Bros Pakora Hut, sparked by that age-old jolt of mutual recognition and a mouthful of spices. In the flush of passion, the unlikely couple ran off to Sikkim to start their own clothing business with a buy-one-get-one-free sales policy, and a profitable sideline in illicit gambling—their stockroom doubling as the venue for high-stakes card games where fortunes were won and lost. The tiny bedroom directly above it became a makeshift temple in the service of love’s delightful labors. A place to retire whenever it pleased them, basking in an Indian Summer neither had dared credit before.

It was the first summer in over a decade that we saw Meena Banerjee’s mother smile, without an undertow of sadness calling its authenticity into question. After using the remaining third of her husband’s insurance money to become her own boss, she discovered that ten years of marital disappointment had sharpened her ability to evaluate unemployed field hands and village boys gone astray. At a single glance—oftentimes withering—she measured their worth and ran the rule over their prospects. Any diamonds in the rough she discovered were immediately put to profitable use.

It was the summer in which certain traditions were upended and others took shape, rushing to fill the gaps left behind by the storm’s passing. Destruction begat novelty which performed a victory lap, as if it had legs enough to last several lifetimes. For a moment, it felt like we were never going back to the way things were before.

About the author

Elina Kumra is a young poet from San Jose, California. She is Reed Magazine's 2024 Emerging Writer, a fiction finalist for Quarterly West, Fractured Lit, TABC Poetry, and Inlandia, and Summit Denali High School's Youth Poet for 2022. Honored by Scholastic Writing, Elina has had her poems, stories, and essays published in numerous literary magazines, including Cathexis Northwest Press, Polyphony, Quibble Lit Published Esay A ( Janus Enjambment), One Art Lit, Nine Syllables Chapbook Semifinalist, Passengers Journal, Power Poetry, New Millennium Writing, Writer’s Digest, and Tint Journal. Her poetry has appeared in three Best of Teen Anthologies: Polyphony, TABC Poetry, and National Poetry 2024. She has been honored by Scholastic Art & Writing Awards with over 20 Gold and Silver Keys.

about the artist

Mirjana Miric (they / them) are a digital artist and writer from Belgrade, Serbia. Their work focuses on exploring the juxtaposition of various elements through mixed media of photography, double exposure, textures and light. Their work most often explores concepts of duality and has appeared in Gulf Stream Literary, The Good Life Review, waxing & waning, Vocivia, Broken Antler, Spellbinder, New Limestone Review magazine and other places. They authored 3 poetry collections. You can see more of their work at their blog olorielmoonshadow.wordpress.com or get in touch on Twitter (@selena_oloriel) and Instagram (@cyanide_cherries).